Magnetic particles may be employed as a solid phase in various methods for isolation and purification of biomolecules. The majority of such procedures are either carried out using inefficient manual methods which require individual attention by the scientist or lab technician performing the procedure, or they are automated for use with large and complex robotic instruments.
Manual methods may be time-consuming and may suffer from human error and lack of reproducibility inherent in manually intensive procedures. Automated methods are hampered by the need for bench space for large and more costly instruments.
The method of operation for the existing systems may be based on three different platforms. One platform is the standard liquid handling robots used for high-throughput methods which has been modified for work with magnetic particles. On such instruments the magnetic separation is either performed on an integrated magnet station, or the microtiter-plates or tube-trays containing the beads are moved by a robotic arm to an external magnet. Typical examples of such robots are the Tecan Genesis® and Tecan Freedom EVO™ (Tecan AG, Switzerland) and the Biomek® FX and Biomek® 2000 (Beckman Coulter Inc., USA). Other robots are designed specifically for use with magnetic beads. WO 94/18565 and WO 96/12958 disclose technologies where the robot uses elongated removers with either longer magnetic rods or short magnetic tips covered with elongated disposable plastic sheaths to move beads from one solution to the next. As the remover is introduced into a mixture with the magnet in lower position inside the sheath, the particles adhere to the surface of the remover and can thus be removed from the mixture. When the magnet is pulled into upper position, the particles are detached from the surface of the remover. The device may include multiple removers operating in parallel so as to allow simultaneous treatment of multiple samples. Such separating techniques have also been commercially implemented in the KingFisher® separating devices of Thermo Electron Oy, Finland. The robots based on the Magtration® technology (Precision Systems Science Co., Ltd., Japan) as described in EP 0763739, are equipped with unique pipette heads with magnets positioned directly behind the pipette tips. The pipette tip system is further described EP 0965842. The magnetic separation is performed inside the pipette tips. Another type of magnetic particle or bead processing instruments are those used for in-vitro diagnostic reactions. Such instruments are for example described in WO93/20440 and WO2006/099255.
What is needed, and what is provided herein is a small, affordable, user-friendly and flexible instrument for reactions performed on solid supports like magnetic particles or beads. This instrument differs from existing robotic instruments in its simplicity with a low number of movable parts while still being fully automatic. This makes the instrument cheaper in production and less prone to hardware failure. The instrument is meant to work with several different bead sizes and for a multitude of different protocols. Typical reactions would be pre-proteomics sample preparation, nucleic acid applications, and cell separation applications, all with increased convenience of use, reduced labor time and increased reproducibility.
In addition, what is needed, and what is provided herein are systems and methods for operating a small, affordable, user-friendly and flexible instrument for reactions performed on solid supports like magnetic particles or beads.